But Seriously...

Bomber was born in the UK to Libyan refugees. He was "known" on a "list". Which translated means "fuck all".

It's not where they come from, or who teaches them. It's what they're taught to in the first place: Islam is the one thing -every- global terror attack has in common. And nothing will change until bleeding heart fucks own up to that truth.

 

And what exactly does owning up to that truth look like? Barring anyone from a Muslim-majority country from entry to the US? Deportation/re-education camps for US Muslim citizens? For all the hand-wringing that goes on on this site about idiots who trade freedom for safety (or the illusion of which) I can't think of any quick-fix "solution" to Islamic terrorism that doesn't qualify as exactly that.

Furthermore, I'd be a lot more willing to work with the Right if they'd own up to 1) the fact that many of them use the cry of Islam as a cover for racism, and 2) that they own up to the fact that Christian Fundamentalism is a cancer in the US that inspires shitstains like this guy to engage in their own terror attacks.

 

Bolded section one, for a start yes. Bolded section two, people from almost every race have converted to or have been born into Islam and while some may indeed be racist thinking it is all "brown" people who are terrible and should be banned or killed outright I find it hard to believe you actually think that most or even many (whatever percentage many equates to) on the right are simply racist when they say that most terror attacks are carried out by muslims and we should be careful to vet them as carefully as possible before letting them in. Even president Obama enacted bans from muslim countries several times during his presidency, surely you wouldn't call him a racist, would you?

 

For the first time in a decade the UK has raised their threat level to "Critical", meaning they think another attack may be imminent.

 

God I love Clickhole: http://www.clickhole.com/article/closing-chapter-last-night-construction-crew-took--6091

 

Wasn't the last time when they blew up the trains and buses?

Also keep in mind: yesterday was Victoria Day, one of the biggest holidays in the Commonwealth. It had everything to do with making it as horrible as possible.

 

I agree that this is a multi-faceted problem that will require a multi-faceted solution. As a brief aside, based on some of what has already been said, I really still have a hard time squaring the Democrat's position of believing so strongly in Women's Rights, Protections for LGBT crowd amongst other worthy causes and still support immigration from points in the world that do not believe in any of this and are not going to conform to our cultural norms.

Beyond that, I think the best way we can work toward ending Islamic terrorism is to remove ourselves from the region. I understand the position that we believe we are doing good and saving lives by trying to bring democracy to the middle east along with the other trappings of Western culture but at some point we all have to step back and ask whether what we have done and are doing is helping or not? We seem to be destabilizing the region and creating more volatile behavior more than anything.

I have said this before but I believe that doing nothing is sometimes the best answer. Whether we overthrow Assad in Syria or not, sell weapons to KSA or not, sanction Iran or not will not fix this. Nothing we do will stop terrorism now, it will take decades to cure the ills of our foreign policy since WWII in the ME. I think the only way to stabilize the area is to step back and let them figure it out on their own. Truthfully, if we do that, we won't like the outcome but that's ok. If we walk away, the ME will likely be ruled similar to the way Afghanistan is ruled by the Taliban. Current borders will be meaningless and there will be torrents of blood shed during this period. I know that sounds utterly unpalatable but if that is what they want then who are we to stop them? Islam and the ME is in desperate need of a reformation. That is an internal event that needs to occur separate from their dealings with us. So, if we are serious about Peace then they need to be allowed to figure it out without our interference. Then our foreign policy in the ME needs to be about diplomacy with what comes and not pure interventionism as it has been.

 

I don't think many things work out anywhere in Africa, ever. It gets what is commonly referred to as "The shit end of the stick" only on a perpetual and planetary scale.

 

So, you know how a big part of the election was people being mad about being judged and dismissed as being a racist when they did not believe themselves to be racist, or didn't support racist policies or racist politicians, and weren't actually white supremacists or white nationalists, but were still lumped in with the people who were just because they were on the same side? Or how mad men or white people get when there's talk about sexism or racism because they don't think they're complicit in it or responsible for it and don't like it when "men" or "white people" are used as kind of a casual catch-all term to mean much bigger and more complex issues than literally meaning "every single man" and "every single white person"? Clearly people are capable of using this same kind of reasoning when they want to be. The viewpoint that you're talking about is simply the logical capability of separating condemning extremism and terrorism and those practices and policies and those governments and those individual people who carry out those acts, and condemning an entire demographic of people, especially when "Muslims" typically doesn't even mean "actively practicing Muslims" but instead "citizens of certain countries regardless of how religious they are or whether or not they even identify as Muslim, including those that are trying to escape the exact type of shit that we're condemning." There are billions of Muslims in the world and the ones who are violent extremists are a minority while the vast majority of them are completely regular people.

And the part about them not going to conform to our cultural norms just isn't true. There are already millions of Muslims here and shit hasn't collapsed and Sharia hasn't been enacted. They didn't just materialize out of nowhere or have solely been here for generations upon generations; they've been coming from these same regions and yet somehow I'm not getting stoned to death while walking through a Muslim neighborhood, just like Indians aren't gangraping women on the bus or Chechnyans aren't rounding up gay people and throwing them in concentration camps or Congolese immigrants aren't training our soldiers to use rape as a tool of war or the Sudanese aren't enlisting child soldiers or Filipinos aren't calling for us to fix our drug problem by executing dealers and users in the streets . They either completely conform and just have regular Westernized lives, or they stay religious anywhere along the spectrum and either do shit we don't agree with but have to accept if we're supposed to be a country for religious freedom just like with all other religious practices that don't exactly jive with modern progressive society, or they do shit we've deemed illegal and they get punished for it which has just never run rampant enough for it to be an issue. I don't know why integration happens more easily in the U.S than elsewhere - I'm sure there are people who've dedicated their entire careers to answering that question who could speculate better - but it does, and this fear of our norms and values and laws changing to accommodate violent extremists is just not that much of a concern.

Fucked up beliefs towards women and gay people are woven into all monotheistic religious beliefs and practices and texts, and there are people taking those to their extremes everywhere. But it's not like those advocating for people to not be legislatively discriminated against for being even tangentially related to those religions or those extremes are also advocating for those extremes. It's actually pretty damn easy to separate the two. But, calling for solutions to the problem that do that too is probably more difficult and is going to take more thought and effort and understanding. If the other view is "you know, I just don't care enough about the millions of Muslims and Middle Eastern citizens who have nothing to do with violent extremism if it means that there's a seemingly quick and easy surface level solution for the low chances of a foreign terrorist coming to America from a select few countries and carrying out a successful attack to be lowered even further" then, okay, that's the view. It just shouldn't be that difficult to see why that might be controversial.

 

Let me clarify what I mean. I don't think saying that "most terror attacks are carried out by Muslims" is racist. What I do believe is that there's a non-insignificant amount of those on the right who would use Islamic terrorism as an excuse when what they really want is restrictions and bans on brown people from foreign countries. Another group - and there's certainly overlap - feel more threatened by the influence of Islamic faith & culture on the US than terror attacks. You see it when you hear people make claims that there are neighborhoods/suburbs/towns where Sharia law is the only law and US law is ignored. So taken together, in real terms it means I don't trust those on the Right to act in good faith about stuff like travel bans, even when such bans are similar to Obama's bans. I'll start trusting the Right when the Right at admits it's got a lot of rotten apples in their tent who have a non-insignificant amount of influence on GOP policy.

Conversely, I acknowledge there are those on the Left who are dishonest actors when it comes to gun control issues; individuals/factions that will use any incremental measure of gun control to use as a springboard for reaching that much further.

 

My original statement was meant to be polite and was probably too vague because there really is a lot of nuance to this subject. You are right though, it's easy to fall into the generalization game. The real issue here is that taking the quick, easy approach to immigration, it seems to me, that means either one of two things: 1. Let them in, no special vetting requirement needed or 2. Keep them all out. So, the argument boils down to Left: You are a racist, bigoted xenophobe to even question letting people from the predominantly muslim world in as refugees, on an expedited basis with no limit to quantity or consideration of cost. Right: If we are going to let people in they need to be boot strapping John Galts each of them that have a pop-up storefront in their suit case and will invent the next generation iphone within 30 days of arrival.

Neither one is reasonable. There is a safety and cultural concern with people coming out of this region of the world, I recognize they are not all terrorists or trying to plant the caliphate flag here but I also recognize that importing hundreds of thousands of people from this part of the world, the heartland of islamic terrorism in the middle of a war on terrorism, on an expedited refugee status is a bad idea. Europe is adjusting to a new normal that involves bombings and coordinated attacks in almost every single instance conducted by non-europeans or the offspring of non-europeans in the name of their God (thus the whole islamic terror thing). The numbers don't lie, the influx of people in the last 30 years into Europe has changed the fabric and is now destabilizing the area. In terms of culture, here's another little shred of reality that can't be ignored:: http://edition.cnn.com/2017/05/11/health/female-genital-mutilation-fgm-explainer-trnd/
This isn't supposed to happen here. Not even one instance. The fact that it is increasing is a real problem and that problem is not home grown. Is that collapse? Absolutely not but I tend to follow trends, this is a negative trend I do not support allowing to continue. It is a trend we need to understand and one we want to avoid entering our borders among many others. This opinion doesn't make me racist, it doesn't make me a bigot, it doesn't even make me an islamaphobe. When that is the response to trying to take extra precaution then you ensure that I will not support refugees.

The other argument you are using is that generations of people from this part of the world have been coming here without issue for a long time and that also holds no weight with me. With the internet age and flow of information people are far more radicalized and hold much more diverse opinions than they did 10 or 15 years ago. Essentially it is a different world now, there really is no consensus on anything anymore. If you can't see that and understand that then I don't know how to really explain that to you. The only thing I can think of here is the return of the flat Earth theory that is making a comeback. Let's face it, the default human setting is stupid. People believe dumb things or are duped easily. A sudden resurgence of the flat Earth theory in 2017 is proof of that and proof that all that has come in this information age is not necessarily good.

 

So what would you want to see improved on/added to the current refugee admission process (where an expedited process means employing more people to do interviews and investigations in more places to get through applications with less delay, not cutting anything from this process)

Spoiler

or

or is it more of a numbers issue?

 

The UK has upped the wounded total from Monday's attack from 59 to 119.

 

This all sounds great. The only problem I see and it is a glaring hole is that this is backward looking in time. There is no discussion of screening email, social media, web traffic, etc. Unless that is glossed over in your glossy flow chart. Before you even bother saying something relating to 4th Amendment Rights, let me remind anyone who is worried, these refugees are not American Citizens and not entitled to 4th Amendment Rights until they prove it. Otherwise, I don't see a lot of issues with the security aspect of it as this is written. Just realize that communication and radicalization all occur online and none of that is even addressed in this process. One other consideration from someone who executes contracts for the Government is that unless you have worked in close proximity to the Federal Government, you will never understand just how inept an organization can be. You will not see more incompetence concentrated in one place than the Federal Government. If you have worked with them you know what I mean and it should worry you that they are tasked with this.

Then the next problem is the numbers part of it. This is pure cost. Money we don't have and furthermore, what is more upsetting to me, we don't take this kind of care of our own poor and homeless folks. To be fair, I have a bad taste in my mouth with the refugee settlement program, not necessarily from the refugees because they don't know any better but more from the Government's inability to manage the process. In Lewiston, ME they settled a large constituent of Somalis. So going back to #7 in the White House flow chart, it looks like they missed the mark in resettlement location. A mill town of lower middle class blue collar folks who are 99.8% white. Good going on that one! They were brought to this little town, given new houses, given welfare, given everything they could possibly need. In many cases more than the locals had. Furthermore, I don't know if you have been to Somalia or not but it is kind of a different place, that gave serious culture shock to the locals, which caused strife between the locals and the Somalis. If that isn't enough, our Government overlords, in their infinite wisdom "wove them into the rich fabric of American society" (see #9 above). That weaving consisted of not watching these people at all and most of the homes were destroyed in under a month. Cabinet doors ripped off and replaced with chicken wire to store live chickens, bathtubs used for open-flame cooking fires, windows removed for ventilation in winter and destroyed plumbing.

So, sure it all sounds great! The only problem is it is fantasy land bullshit and I'm not buying what they're selling.

 

I've just been assuming that looking into online activity was already part of the screening process. I couldn't find anything either way just now, but it wasn't exactly an in depth search. Anyone know for sure? If it's not, then that seems perfectly fair to me. Social media etc is public, so I don't see any privacy concerns there, and for things like email and browsing history, I figure that can be done the same way the NSA and marketing tech looks through all our shit anyway.

The thing about the "why are we bothering with caring about foreigners when our own citizens are being treated shittily at home" idea is that the side that puts forward that argument as a reason to cut down or eliminate foreign aid or refugee programs is also that side that's all rhetoric and no policy when it comes to pretending to care about our country's poor. Yeah, I'd love for our own people to be helped too, but the people who say that also fight budgets and programming and legislation every step of the way because most often that means rich people paying more taxes and that's the absolute most important thing for them to prevent. But hey, if they decide to have some political theater and make some showy faux bipartisan compromise where, say, every foreign aid program improvement (aka budget increase) has to be met with some improvement to help our own issues with poverty, that seems like a win/win even if it allows the right to pretend like they actually give a shit about the poor.

As for the other stuff, I just don't feel that bad for people experiencing culture shock, if that's what we're going to call it, as a consequence, and I really don't give a shit what people do with their homes. Sounds like every other white trash house or shitty apartment in the projects to me.

 

The point is that the whole "weaving these people into the fabric" is a lie. That is their local community, not yours and not the Federal Government. The community should have the expectation of some say in this considering they are ultimately the ones that pay for it. Furthermore, the destruction of property is just as much yours or my property they are destroying, we paid for it, not the refugees. So when you boil it down, the Government made an investment in these people with our money and didn't manage the investment. The Government has a fiduciary duty to us to do so and they have failed and will continue to fail. You wouldn't do this with your retirement savings, would you? If your advisor failed and continued to fail due to negligence and incompetence, you would fire them. Why allow the Government this kind of leeway?

 

This is a common misconception. If you are in the United States, you are entitled to some protections in the Constitution. These would include all of the ones that give criminal protection such as due process, illegal search, etc. What it does not do is give them the right to vote, or get a lawyer in immigration cases (since immigration is a civil matter).

 

I think thats a good point to highlight and promote. These protections are vital to protecting everyones safety, not just American citizens.